


Shift

by Sophia_Bee



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Falling In Love, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-05
Updated: 2017-10-05
Packaged: 2019-01-09 11:56:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12275991
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sophia_Bee/pseuds/Sophia_Bee
Summary: A little exploration of Jaime Lannister and his relationship with Brienne of Tarth. Takes place during their journey to King's Landing.





	Shift

**Author's Note:**

> As always, my dearest Leafeylocket gave this a quick edit, despite it feeling like a slight betrayal of our beloved Cherik. She suffers for me. 
> 
> This is strictly based on the TV series, BECAUSE I HAVE NOT READ THE BOOKS. And I am eternally shit with tags. xoxo

At some point something shifts. 

His words, meant to hurt, insults designed to crawl under her skin, become something else. He no longer looks for the cracks, the small painful places where he can gain leverage. He no longer wants to remind her that she is ugly, undesirable, unwanted. 

She is not unwanted. 

He has lived with the insults, the quiet whispers of bent heads, “Kingslayer” whispered after him as he strode down the chilled stone hallways of the Red Keep. He has borne them with a quick flick of his eye, a wry twist of his mouth, a clever insult. He has told himself that they do not know. Even if they did, he will always be Jaime Lannister, careless, handsome and hollow. A man without honor. 

Until her. 

He wonders if the voices whisper at her too, telling her she is neither a lady nor a knight. They whisper to him. Undeserving. Neither are good enough for the world. 

At some point his games become different. First it is to hurt. When he realizes he will not win, that she will take no small amount of the verbal arrows he sends her way and still ride with her back straight and her mouth fixed, it changes. It becomes about the small things: a glance his way, the quirk of her mouth, the subtle knitting of her brow. He is, after all, charming. His charm might be honed just as sharply as his sword. If he cannot wear her down with insults, his charm will have to do.

In the end it is neither insult nor charm that wins. It is truth. 

The bath. It sticks in his memory. He was broken, more broken than he had ever felt before. It was not like many had not tried to break him before. For he is Jaime Lannister, the best in the kingdom. He is strong, stronger than anyone. Until they took his pride in the form of his hand. Until they took away his meaning. The bath. A moment of truth. He stepped into the warm water, feeling every scrape, cut, broken bone. He stepped in, his chest tight, every breath hurting. Still, he was Jaime Lannister. Haughty until the end. Confident. He watched her as she pulled her knees to her chest, his mouth quirking. As if he could want her. _Her._

He cannot control his mouth. He never has been able to. Another strike at her, where it hurts most. The moment the words fall from his lips he wants to pull them back in, to swallow them whole. 

She stands, full of fury, fists balled, the most beautiful woman he’s ever seen. 

How wrong he had been.

He can’t do anything but want her. 

He can’t tell her anything but the truth. 

All of it. 

Sometimes his sword hand aches. Sometimes he can feel his fingers, flex them one by one. Sometimes he reaches out, forgetting…. He cries out in the night, in pain and fear, ghosts of too many battles haunting him. 

She is there. 

He cannot see the disdain on her face, for it is shadowed in the moonlight. He can not see how anger furrows her brow. She does not say the name the world has given him: Kingslayer. 

He does hear her say his name. The one he was born with. She says it, and it is full of meaning and fear. 

_Jaime._

A cloth wipes his brow. Fingers soothe away the furrows. She is warm, stretched along his back, almost too hot on his nightmare fevered skin, her fingers brushing his brow, strangely delicate. They pretend nothing happened in the early light of dawn, Jaime blearily peering from his bedroll, Brienne crouched awkwardly over the small cook fire she dared to make. She looks at him with the same disdain she’s always held. And something else. A softness. 

Brienne is soft. 

Jaime knows this. 

His heart still belongs to another. Golden hair, curves, she threatens to swallow him whole. She is soft, his dear sister. Soft to the touch, soft around him. Yet she cuts him. Every time. 

Brienne is hard. She is compact muscles, earned from training and fighting. She is scars and wounds, a map that marks her skin. He sees them sometimes, white on pale skin, a tale of her life, one that she is still adding to. 

The bear. The slash across her clavicle, red and angry. If he had not left her. Maybe….

He will never leave her again. 

Devotion is a funny thing. 

It sneaks up on you and suddenly you find yourself all tangled in it. She calls it honor. She looks at him with those blue eyes filled with expectation. 

“You are a knight, Ser Jaime.” 

He wants to correct her, to offer her a flippant cocky smile. He cannot. Because she sees what no one has since he plunged his sword into the back of his king. To save his father. To save a city. He had thought his honor gone, then he met this great beast of a woman, not a lady and just short of a knight. 

Brienne the Beauty. 

They say it behind her back, whisper it where they think she cannot hear. He sees her flinch, sees the hurt in her eyes. Do they not see? 

No one is more beautiful. 

Something shifts. He has been what everyone else thinks of him for so long. Kingslayer, Oathbreaker. Man without Honor. Now he is hers. Her knight.

He never touches her, never takes his hand and cups her face. He never reaches to tangle his fingers with hers, reveling in the simplest touch. He never touches his lips to hers or buries his fingers in her hair. They ride, side by side, not even glancing at each other, both aware that this is not forever. They will return to King's Landing and he will be the Kingsguard, the lover of the queen, and she will be nothing. 

Yet he will never be the same. Because she is in his heart.


End file.
